Little Secrets

To Leonard, few of the secrets are given. I ask and ask, What governs heaven? and how to reach the utmost pure thoughts that elude my simple mind. With doubts

Of You and Your heavenly Kingdom, I dont know why I prefer the foliage that shades me from the sun, but its in the darkness I belong.

I sleep in light and work the nights alone, some say thats why Im so forlorn. I say the days are too bright to look and see at the same time. But the books

I read, like this Iqbal from the Urdu, rouse my mind and cure my blues. He reminds me of Ralph Waldo in another time, disguised. If he

returned and took a different form could it please be in my dreams? Im not jesting, the chaos of the dual increases my passion for the real.

Leonard Cirino is the author of 16 chapbooks and 12 full-length collections of poems. His latest chapbook, The Ability to Dream, was just published by Phrygian Press. Editors note: Iqbal was a poet-philosopher of Pakistan in the early 20th